Application Changes At School of Medicine

By Greg RienziThe Gazette

In order to streamline its application process and increase
its pool of candidates, the
School of
Medicine has recently joined the American Medical College
Application Service, a nonprofit, centralized application
processing service for first-year applicants to participating
schools.

In doing so, Hopkins joins 112 other medical schools that
are now registered with AMCAS. Hopkins was among the more notable
holdouts to this process; others included Yale and Columbia,
which still do not participate.

David Trabilsy, assistant dean for admissions at the School
of Medicine, said that Hopkins had initially resisted joining
AMCAS because his office felt it had an application form that was
tailored to the type of qualities the selection committee looked
for, such as participation in extracurricular activities.

However, Trabilsy said that for a number of reasons School
of Medicine officials felt it was time to make the move to
AMCAS.

One of the reasons he gave is the decline in applicants that
many medical schools are facing due to issues involving managed
health care, the perceived loss of autonomy on the part of
physicians and the rising cost of tuition. Hopkins had an 8
percent decrease in its number of applicants last year, while
other medical schools were down as much as 25 percent.

"We are now experiencing our third consecutive year of a
declining applicant pool. It's my speculation this trend will
continue in the foreseeable future," said Trabilsy, adding,
however, that Hopkins is currently at a comfortable level of
applicants. "We want to be in a good position to continue to draw
applicants, and AMCAS will help us to maintain a national base to
that pool."

AMCAS was developed by admissions officers of member
institutions of the Association of American Medical Colleges to
facilitate the process of applying to U.S. medical schools and is
intended to benefit both the applicant and the participating
school by reducing the time and, in many cases, the expense of
the application procedure.

Trabilsy said that by joining AMCAS Hopkins could expect up
to double the number of applications it receives. The expectation
is that the process will bring in a wider distribution of
candidates, including high-caliber students who might not have
otherwise applied.

"We are very excited about this change and the prospect that
we will be reaching more students nationally," Trabilsy said.

This increase of applicants will not alter the high
standards of the selection committee, he said. "The selection
process will maintain the features that we currently feel are
important, such as the quality of the academic work and the high
value we place on experience outside the classroom," Trabilsy
said, adding that having more applicants will not significantly
increase the number of those who are interviewed.

The new application will be available June 1, 1999, for
those seeking to enroll in September 2000.

To apply, the student contacts AMCAS at its office in
Washington or through its Web site at
http://www.aamc.org and is given a choice of a traditional
paper application or one on a diskette. The student fills out the
form, checks off schools the application is to go to and then
mails the completed document and an official transcipt back to
AMCAS, which verifies the information and distributes it along
with the applicant's latest two released MCAT scores. The AMCAS
application fee is $50 for the first school, with a decreasing
scale of fees for each additional school designated. In
comparison, the current application fee for Hopkins is $60.

After receiving the application, Hopkins admission officials
will then ask the applicant for any additional information they
need on which to base their decision. Trabilsy said he hopes that
in the future the AMCAS form might include the type of questions
now asked by Hopkins.

Currently, the
Office of Admissions receives all applications
on paper and does computer entry of all the information. AMCAS,
however, will provide the data in electronic form, meaning far
less data entry for the admissions staff and significantly less
paper use. Trabilsy said Hopkins had thought of putting an actual
application on its Web site but decided that AMCAS would be the
better way to go.

"We saw no reason for us to reinvent the wheel," Trabilsy
said. By 2002 all AMCAS applications will be filled out
online.

The Admissions Office is currently implementing a new
computer system that will be able to process data received from
AMCAS.

The new application procedure also will mean changes will be
made to the School of Medicine's Web site, Trabilsy said, as
there will be a greater reliance on it for disseminating
information about Hopkins.